The personal Jam Jar first
On Sunday morning at our local church the visiting speaker used jam jars to illustrate the importance of getting your priorities right.
He asked a child to come forward and see how many snooker balls he could fit in a jam jar. Only three or four. He asked if the child had any more space to fill. This time he offered dried beans to assist, about a further ten could be squeezed in. He shook the jar and then gave a box of sand to the child, this was used to fill up the remaining space. Finally some hot coffee was added and left to soak in.
To further illustrate the point he produced another jar, part filled with sand. How may snooker balls could he fit in then?
Just one. No beans, didn’t even bother with the coffee.
What was the point?
The lesson was to show clearly that some things in our lives are much more important than others. If we fill our lives with the irrelevant we have less time for the things that matter more.
The snooker balls are the big things such as family, friends, health or faith. The beans would be leisure pursuits, social activities and hobbies. Everything else is just sand, the stuff if taken away would have little overall impact on your life.
Sometimes we get wrapped up in the mundane and lose sight of the things that matter.
Your business Jam Jar
In the context of your business, make sure you have the important things sorted first, the elements that you really can’t do without. Those items that ensure your business wellbeing. It’s no good spending extra time on the not so important or trivial. Every business needs to know what is vital, important and concentrate on those items such as long term goals, quality of service and product development.
The secondary items are still important, but less than the primary goals. An occasional cup of coffee represents the wild card that may be needed from time to time.
Our Accelerator Club workshops this year will all be about focusing on the important, building a real successful growth strategy.
Aim to get those jam jars filled with snooker balls not sand!
Next session is on the 11th February, phone or email info@grugeonreynolds.co.uk to reserve a space or go to Eventbrite.